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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Half-Life & After-Life Of New Media, Nancy Austin
The Half-Life & After-Life Of New Media, Nancy Austin
Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies
It is fitting to think of the half-life of new media using the time-based metaphor of radioactive decay. As a metaphor, an object’s half-life can be a useful way to talk about the potent technological modernity of new media and, like Walter Benjamin’s well-known notion of the aura, call attention to an object’s performativity. However, Benjamin’s aura remains a constant reminder of irrevocable originality whereas remarking on half-life references a quality that changes over time. But what happens after the rhetorical impact of being new has run its course? What is the life expectancy of once-new media and what of …
Faded But Not Forgotten: Thinking About The Records And Relics Of America's Earliest Forays In Photography, Jeffrey Mifflin
Faded But Not Forgotten: Thinking About The Records And Relics Of America's Earliest Forays In Photography, Jeffrey Mifflin
Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies
The first documented photographs in America were taken in the spring of 1839 by enthusiastic experimenters after studying recently arrived publications from England, detailing William Henry Fox Talbot's instructions for making photogenic drawings. The images have not survived, but meaning can nevertheless be found in the circumstances surrounding their production and disappearance.